TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter IX: Transit Camp Treblinka 275
at 4:20 PM, and return “2/. Ln Kr 9086 / 11.30 / Treblinka – Ma�kinia – Warsaw
Danz Bf” with departure at 7:00 PM and arrival at 11:19 PM. 821
Moreover, Albert Ganzenmüller, Secretary of State in the Reichsverkehrsministerium
(Ministry of Transport) and Deputy General Director of the German
Reichsbahn (National Railway), made the following report to SS-Gruppenführer
Wolff on July 28, 1942: 822
“Since July 22, a train with 5,000 Jews makes a daily trip from Warsaw
to Treblinka via Ma�kinia, in addition to a train with 5,000 Jews traveling
twice a week from Przemysl to Belzec.”
On August 13, Wolff responded: 823
“I have noted with especial pleasure your report that a train with 5,000
members of the Chosen People has already been running for 14 days to
Treblinka every day, and we are thus indeed in a position to carry out this
movement of population at an accelerated tempo.”
On April 11, 1962, Wolff was confronted with this letter during questioning
as a witness at the preliminary investigations for the Frankfurt Auschwitz
trial. Wolff made the following statement in reply to this: 824
“At the time I did not connect the notion of a mass extermination camp
with the name of Treblinka. I assumed it was a Jewish reservation [sic], as
Himmler had explained it to me.”
Incredibly, not a single German report concerning such a large-scale displacement
of population has been preserved. The only numerical information
available to us comes from a terse excerpt from the Stroop Report: 247
“The first large resettlement action took place in the period from 22
July to 3 October 1942. In this action 310,322 Jews were removed.”
This figure is definitely reliable and on the whole it corresponds to the table
cited above, so that this may be taken to reflect actual numbers. It is also
quite probable that most of the transports went to Treblinka. It is clear as well
from the few train schedules extant that the trains were emptied at Treblinka
and returned to their departure point without passengers. Of course, none of
this proves that the deportees were murdered in Treblinka. The “Disclosures
and Conditions for the Jewish Council” of July 22, 1943, prescribed: 825
“All Jewish persons who live in Warsaw, of whatever age and sex, are
to be resettled to the east.”
Exempted from the resettlement were, among others:
821
Reproduced in Raul Hilberg, op. cit. (note 269), pp. 178f.
822
Ibid., p. 177.
823
Ibid., p. 181.
824
State Office of Prosecution at the Frankfurt (Main) District Court criminal proceedings
against Baer and others at the Frankfurt Court of Assizes, Ref. 4 Js 444/59 vol. 65, pp. 12,
100.
825
Faschismus – Getto – Massenmord, op. cit. (note 290), p. 305.